Getting to the truth behind modern day mythology. Beware the tall tales coming out of Greece

Getting to the truth behind modern day mythology. Beware the tall tales coming out of Greece

The narrative now being devised in Athens to reconcile the harsh and brutal new memorandum is getting wilder by the day. The reality to what was offered, what was taken, and what could have been for Greece is much simpler and straight forward than the Athens media spinsters are now presenting.

Ever since the latest bailout agreement, misinformation to justify it has been pouring out of Greece.

Much of this centres on the impracticability of supposed plans for a Grexit and of the “revolutionary” nature of the individuals who hatched them.

Varoufakis has claimed authorship of some of these plans. Others are attributed to the former Energy Minister and leader of Syriza’s Left Platform, Panagiotis Lafantzanis.

Varoufakis’s plan, which he claims to have presented to Tsipras at the last moment as the referendum results were coming in, was for the Greek government to start handing out electronic IOUs in place of a currency. This would have been accompanied by capital controls, the nationalisation of the banks and the seizure of the government’s revenue office and of the Bank of Greece.

Varoufakis claims that this plan was prepared by the five man group based within the Finance Ministry he set up back in February. Apparently this group carried out its work in total secrecy and – in a bizarre twist – even hacked into the Finance Ministry’s own computers in order to prepare its plans.

Meanwhile the Financial Times has published a lurid account of a semi-secret meeting arranged by Lafantzanis and Syriza’ s Left Platform in an Athens hotel, where there was supposedly wild talk of having the governor of the Bank of Greece arrested and of seizing the hoard of euros supposedly stashed away in the Athens mint in order to keep the economy going and to pay for essential imports until a new currency was set up.

No doubt in the desperate situation caused by the Syriza government’s failure to undertake proper and timely preparations for the launch of a new currency all sorts of wild ideas were in circulation.

Not all these ideas were wild. It is constantly overlooked that because the Greek banks were bailed out by the Greek government in 2008 (a major reason why its debt burden became so catastrophically and insupportably high) they are already 80% state owned. “Nationalising” the banks would not therefore have been an act of revolutionary confiscation or of appropriation of private property. It would have simply meant the state taking operational control of the banks by replacing their managements by new managements appointed by and accountable directly to the government.

Implementing extreme steps such as seizing the Bank of Greece and the mint and issuing IOUs would nonetheless have provoked a major crisis in Greece. The economy would have been thrown into turmoil, with much of the population and the business community refusing to accept the IOUs of a bankrupt government as a credible substitute for actual money.

Acting in such a way would also have completely antagonised the EU leaders, who would have been bound to construe such steps as a declaration of economic war, and who would undoubtedly have responded by suspending the Greek government’s participation in the EU’s central institutions on the grounds that it was in breach of the fundamental provisions of Article 2 of the Treaty of the European Union.

Putting all that aside, what no one has explained is why any of these schemes were necessary.

Implicit in Varoufakis’s various “plans” and in the scheme the Financial Times attributes to Lafantzanis is the strange idea that preparing a new currency was something that needed to be done in secret and which would have had to be improvised at the last moment.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Far from the introduction of a new currency being something that would have been resisted across Greece and Europe, we know it would have had the backing of the German Finance Ministry, of Wolfgang Schauble and of the IMF.

According to the British writer Tariq Ali, as long ago as February Schauble was offering Varoufakis 50 billion euros and help with an orderly Grexit. Tariq Ali describes the offer in this way:

“It is now known that Schäuble offered an amicable, organised Grexit and a cheque for 50 billion euros. This was refused on the grounds that it would seem to be a capitulation. This is bizarre logic. It would have preserved Greek sovereignty, and if Syriza had taken charge of the Greek banking system a recovery could have been planned on its terms. The offer was repeated later. ‘How much do you want to leave the Eurozone?’ Schäuble asked Varoufakis just before the referendum. Again Schäuble was snubbed. Of course the Germans made the offer for their own reasons, but a planned Grexit would have been far better for Greece than what has happened.”

No one in Greece is denying this story and in fact I am told it is true.

I recently wrote a piece for Russia Insider in which I said that the claim that Putin rejected a request from Tsipras for $10 billion is – as the Russians say – pure fantasy. We now have indirect confirmation of this from what must ultimately be a Greek source (the one that gave the story to Tariq Ali). Why would Tsipras ask Putin for $10 billion to fund a Grexit when Schauble was offering him 50 billion euros to do the same?

Even as late as the latest EU summit the option of an orderly Grexit was on the table. Schauble – with Merkel’s (alas temporary) backing – actually proposed it. If the Greeks had agreed to it, it would have happened. The IMF, which has made known its complete lack of belief in the viability of the latest bailout, would have backed it.

Greece would have got its 50 billion euros to help it support the new currency, Schauble and the Germans would have ensured that the ECB provided the necessary liquidity to the banks to keep the banks operating until the new currency was ready, the banks could have been nationalised by mutual agreement – there being as I have said nothing revolutionary about this – capital controls would have been imposed until the new currency was ready (the Germans agreed to this when Cyprus imposed them, so why would they refuse it if sought by Greece?) and control of the Bank of Greece, the mint and the revenue service would have been transferred back to the Greek government as an indispensable element in an orderly and agreed Grexit. Meanwhile the Russians, as I reported previously, were prepared to help with essential imports of energy and (probably) food.

The Financial Times in its hit piece says the process of introducing a new currency would have taken 6-8 months, which is much less than the 18 months Varoufakis has claimed.

Actually that is far too pessimistic. The former British cabinet minister John Redwood has guesstimated it would have taken no more than 3 months. In my opinion, given financial help from the EU and the IMF and technical support e.g. from Russia, the whole process could have been carried out from beginning to end in the space of a few weeks.

Once Greece was out of the eurozone it could have agreed – if it wanted – a formal restructuring as part of a package negotiated with the IMF (the alternative of a default on the entire debt might have done irreparable damage to relations with the creditor countries). The conditions would doubtless have been tough but they would hardly have amounted to the psychopathic agreement we have now. With Greece outside the eurozone and able to regain competitiveness through a devaluation there would have been a real chance that whatever was agreed would succeed.

However one spins the ball, the reality has to be faced: a Grexit did not happen not because it was difficult to do but because the Syriza government didn’t want it.

All claims to the contrary are fairy tales, whilst the malicious spreading of stories about the various plans that were hatched in the desperate final hours before Greece’s final capitulation is being done purposefully by those who want to discredit the idea of a Grexit and those who support it.

As for the perennial claim that the Greek people want to cling on to the euro no matter what, I have previously said why since the referendum I no longer believe that claim despite what the opinion polls are alleged to say.

In my opinion far too many people go on giving Tsipras and Syriza the benefit of the doubt even though the extent of their incompetence and of their double-dealing is becoming simply impossible to ignore.

Varoufakis has in fact now admitted that the real Plan B if the negotiations for a debt write-off failed was not a Grexit – his claims to have prepared for one is so much smoke and mirrors – but a resignation of the government and the formation of a “government of national unity” consisting of the old oligarchic pro-EU parties to sign a bailout package in place of Syriza. In Varoufakis’s own words

“We are going to do all it takes to bring home a financially viable agreement. We will compromise but not be compromised. We will step back just as much as is needed to secure an agreement-solution within the Eurozone. However, if we are defeated by the catastrophic policies of the memorandum we shall step down and pass on the power to those who believe in such means; let them enforce those measures while we return to the streets.”

No word here of any plan for a Grexit.

This by the way surely provides final confirmation that my previous statement – doubted by some – that the Ambrose Evans-Pritchard story that Tsipras called the referendum in expectation of a Yes vote so as to give himself political cover to resign is true.

In my opinion such a resignation of a government elected just a few months before to bring an end to austerity would have been an extraordinary act of abdication of responsibility.

Regardless it is not what Tsipras and Syriza did.

Instead of resigning when they failed to secure a debt write-off they chose to remain in power and negotiated for Greece an even worse deal than the one they had previously rejected.

Instead of admitting that Schauble offered him a dignified way out, Varoufakis is now also busy spreading a fantastic story that Schauble was throughout plotting to expel Greece from the eurozone so that he could terrorise France to accept the economic medicine he suoposedly wants to impose on it. Varoufakis is actually claiming that Schauble told him as much.

Varoufakis’s precise words are:

“Schauble believes that the eurozone is not sustainable as it is. He believes there has to be some fiscal transfers, some degree of political union. He believes that for that political union to work without federation, without the legitimacy that a properly elected federal parliament can render, can bestow upon an executive, it will have to be done in a very disciplinary way,”

“And he said explicitly to me that a Grexit is going to equip him with sufficient terrorising power in order to impose upon the French, that which Paris has been resisting: a degree of transfer of budget making powers from Paris to Brussels.”

Does anybody seriously believe that if Schauble really did have such a plan he would have shared it with Varoufakis of all people?

The reality, as I have always said, is that Schauble adamantly opposes a debt write-off for Greece whilst it remains part of the eurozone not because he wants to terrorise France into submission but because of the disastrous precedent such a write-off might provide to other heavily indebted and bailed out eurozone states like Portugal, Spain, Cyprus and Ireland.

Obviously that is not sinister enough for Varoufakis – who has never shown the slightest understanding of Schauble’s position – which is why he attributes this bizarre plan to him.

Sad to say it seems Varoufakis was already spreading his fable about Schauble’s wicked plan to use Greece in order to terrorise France whilst the negotiations were actually underway – one reason surely why Schauble came to dislike him so much.

It could be that Varoufakis misunderstood something Schauble said to him. However I have to say that it also looks rather like an attempt by Varoufakis to play the French and the Germans off against each other – in much the same way that Tsipras was trying to play the Russians and the Europeans (and Americans) off against each other. Needless to say the ploy failed.

In fairness to Tsipras, Varoufakis and Syriza, though their tactics were manipulative and duplicitous, their objective was always what they said it was: to keep Greece in the eurozone whilst securing an end to austerity and a debt write-off.

Most people – including me – assumed that as it became clear this was impossible they would drop the euro in order to end austerity and secure the debt write-off.

In fairness to him, that is the position, when all else failed, that Varoufakis eventually adopted, though the plan he came up with is testament to his failure to prepare for a Grexit properly, as he should have done.

In Tsipras’s case however it is now clear he always intended the opposite – to drop the plan to end austerity and get a debt write-off so as to hang on to the euro.

I still come across from time to time a strange idea that Tsipras and Syriza are agents of Soros and of the CIA.

Nothing they have done in power is consistent with that theory, which my sources insist is untrue.

By contrast I am slowly coming round to what anyone who knows Greece well would judge an altogether more plausible theory – that Tsipras and the Syriza government were a device cooked up by a part of the oligarchy to scare the Germans into granting Greece a debt write-off whilst keeping Greece in the Eurozone. The calculation was that a “pro-Russian”, “ultra left” leader, who “might fall into Putin’s embrace” was more scary and would have a better chance of securing a debt write-off than a more conventional conservative. Once it became clear that the scare wasn’t going to work, the Syriza project was shelved.

To those who say this is too complicated, my response is that for the Greek oligarchy nothing is too complicated.

This will be my working hypothesis from now on. I am planning to visit Greece soon and whilst there I will undertake certain enquiries to see if I can find out whether or not this hypothesis is true.

In the meantime I would ask people to keep a cool head in the face of all the nonsense that is now coming out of Greece. I am afraid that it is not without good reason we are known as the land of myths, legends and wondrous tales. There are far too many of those circulating over the last few days and people should be careful before they fall for them.

New Zealand enacts new weapons ban just six days after massacre

Reuters reported on Thursday, March 21 that the Prime Minister of New Zealand enacted a sweeping change, banning weapons of the type that were used in the massacre of at least fifty Muslims, who were gunned down on livestream while in Friday prayer services in Christchurch last week. We quote from the Reuters piece below, with added emphasis:

New Zealand will ban military-style semi-automatic and assault rifles under tough new gun laws following the killing of 50 people in its worst mass shooting, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Thursday.

In the immediate aftermath of last Friday’s shootings at two mosques in the city of Christchurch, Ardern labeled the attack as terrorism and said New Zealand’s gun laws would change.

“On 15 March our history changed forever. Now, our laws will too. We are announcing action today on behalf of all New Zealanders to strengthen our gun laws and make our country a safer place,” Ardern told a news conference.

“All semi-automatic weapons used during the terrorist attack on Friday 15 March will be banned.”

Ardern said she expected the new laws to be in place by April 11 and a buy-back scheme costing up to NZ$200 million ($138 million) would be established for banned weapons.

All military style semi-automatics (MSSA) and assault rifles would be banned, along with parts used to convert weapons into MSSAs and all high-capacity magazines.

Australia banned semi-automatic weapons and launched a gun buy-back after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996 in which 35 people were killed.

Ardern said that similar to Australia, the law would allow for strictly enforced exemptions for farmers for pest control and animal welfare.

“I strongly believe that the vast majority of legitimate gun owners in New Zealand will understand that these moves are in the national interest, and will take these changes in their stride.”

This is undoubtedly going to be real red meat (or perhaps real vegetables) for the anti-gun lobby in the United States. This is because New Zealand strongly resembled the US in terms of firearm rights and the penetration of numbers of guns in the populace of this remote island nation. Reuters continues, with statements that would probably surprise, even horrify some gun owners in the States, but which are doubtlessly useful for the application of pressure on such individuals:

New Zealand, a country of fewer than 5 million people, has an estimated 1.2-1.5 million firearms, about 13,500 of them MSSA-type weapons.

Most farmers own guns while hunting of deer, pigs and goats is popular. Gun clubs and shooting ranges dot the country.

That has created a powerful lobby that has thwarted previous attempts to tighten gun laws.

Federated Farmers, which represent thousands of farmers, said it supported the new laws.

“This will not be popular among some of our members but … we believe this is the only practicable solution,” a group spokesman, Miles Anderson, said in a statement.

The main opposition National Party, which draws strong support in rural areas, said it also supported the ban.

The changes exclude two general classes of firearms commonly used for hunting, pest control and stock management on farms.

“I have a military style weapon. But to be fair, I don’t really use it, I don’t really need it,” said Noel Womersley, who slaughters cpoliticalattle for small farmers around Christchurch.

“So I’m quite happy to hand mine over.”

To be absolutely fair, the attack on the mosques was an awful event, made the worse by the shooter’s deliberate attempts to politicize various aspects of what he was doing and what he “stood for” as an attack ostensibly against US President Donald Trump, some seven thousand miles away in the United States.

The immediate reaction of the people interviewed, some among them related or friends with the victims of the massacre, was to embrace the weapons reform laws:

Nada Tawfeek, who buried her father-in-law killed in the attacks, Hussein Moustafa, on Thursday, welcomed the ban.

“It’s a great reaction. I think other countries need to learn from her [Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern],” Tawfeek said.

Mohammed Faqih, a member of the Islamic clergy who flew in from California and attended the funerals for some victims on Thursday, said he was “extremely grateful” for the gun ban.

“I wish our leaders in the States would follow on her footsteps and do the same thing,” he said.

One can expect there to be quite the outcry among American liberals about gun control, especially if anything remotely resembling this event takes place or is thwarted in coming days in the US.

American paleo-conservative Rush Limbaugh was one of the first to note: “There’s an ongoing theory that the shooter himself may, in fact, be a leftist who writes the manifesto and then goes out and performs the deed purposely to smear his political enemies, knowing he’s going to get shot in the process. You know you just can’t – you can’t immediately discount this. The left is this insane, they are this crazy. And then if that’s exactly what the guy is trying to do then he’s hit a home run, because right there on Fox News: ‘Shooter is an admitted white nationalist who hates immigrants.’”

…[P]eople like Limbaugh… can’t stomach the idea the terrorist action in Otautahi might be motivated by the kind of rhetoric Limbaugh helps disseminate – tend to think there is a culture war going on, and they are on the losing side.

This war has many names, and the enemy is easily identified: it is the battle against Cultural Marxism; the fight against Toxic Feminism; the resistance to Identity Politics; and the fear of the Great Replacement, the thesis at the heart of the terrorist’s own manifesto.

The Great Replacement thesis posits that the majority white European countries are being “invaded” by non-white, non-European peoples. Not just that, but due to declining birth rates in the West, this “invasion” constitutes a wholesale replacement of the white population over time.

Mr. Dentith tries further to knock down this notion of the Great Replacement. However, he misses a much more basic point.

Someone who goes and takes human lives and broadcasts them for any reason is not a mere political operative. The person who does this is a very sick, deranged human being indeed. Evil is certainly appropriately used here.

However, evil is often quite cunning, and despite the intellectual arguments about the reality or non-reality of any particular manifesto statement, in this case, the killer played the media with infernal intelligence, and they took the bait. It is possible that Prime Minister Ardern also took the bait, in this most awful of bad situations, and to give her credit, she took swift actions to try to “correct” what was wrong.

But the problem here was not the type of weapons used. The problem is the fact that they were used by a person who thought these fifty people’s lives were worth nothing more than a bit of policy change. One of the worst examples of human evil in recent times, this incident shouts to the world that there is a problem, but the problem remains unsolved, even though many people will hand over their firearms out of a genuine wish for compassion to those lost and the hope that somehow this action will prevent a future incident.

But the logic of this emotional reaction is nil. And what is worse is that the American Left knows this, but does not care. The movers and shakers of liberalism will likely milk the actions of sincerely horrified New Zealanders for all they are worth to try at affecting change in American constitutional rights.

And the innocent dead will not rest in peace, because the real problem has not even been examined.

Upstart Populist Party Shocks In Dutch Election Upset, 2 Days After Utrecht Attack

Dutch voters have sent shock waves through Europe at the polls on Wednesday in the wake of Monday’s deadly Utrecht terror shooting, in which a now detained 37-year old Turkish man went on a terrifying tram killing spree which left three dead and three injured.

Euroskeptic party, Forum for Democracy (FvD), has emerged victorious in key provincial elections this week, paving the way to making it one of the two largest groups in the Dutch Senate, and representing growing Dutch frustration with the recent unprecedented refugee influx in Europe.

Newcomer Forum for Democracy party is led by 36-year-old Thierry Baudet, who is a critic of the EU and of the Netherlands’ immigration policies, via EPA

International reports have described the FvD as receiving “a surge of last-minute support” in the days following the Utrecht attack, which investigators have since described as having a “terror motive” based on a letter found in shooter Gokmen Tanis’ possession.

If people want more deadly shootings like the one in Utrecht, then they have to vote for the VVD.

Baudet, riding a wave of renewed Euroskeptic sentiment, and whose party also wants to see more military spending, green initiatives, and an easing on income tax while greatly restricting the borders, said in the aftermath of Wednesday’s vote: “The voters in the Netherlands have spread their wings and shown their true power.”

Referencing the Utrecht attack and other deadly terror incidents on European soil, he added: “We have been called to the front because we have to. Because the country needs us.”

Three were killed and several injured in Monday’s Dutch tram terror attack, which raised the country’s emergency threat level to five as it was unfolding, its highest level.

Interestingly, the 36-year old Baudet and his party continued campaigning down to the last moments even as others stopped in the wake of Monday’s attack which rocked the Netherlands. According to Al Jazeera:

Following the lead of US President Donald Trump, Baudet opposes immigration and emphasises “Dutch first” cultural and economic themes. He opposes the euro and thinks the Netherlands should leave the European Union.

Baudet had continued campaigning when other parties stopped after Monday’s attack in Utrecht, in which a gunman shot three people dead on a tram. The populist leader blamed the incident on the government’s lax immigration policies.

The FvD is now set to take 12 seats in the upper house of parliament, which is equal to Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s conservative VVD Party, a scenario before this week considered unlikely according to many observers.

The FvD slightly outscoring the VVD means Rutte’s government has lost its majority for the 75-seat Senate ahead of upcoming May elections.

In a post-election speech on Wednesday, Baudet described further that what’s now being described in international media as “an upstart populist party [that has] shocked the Dutch political establishment” as punishing the arrogance of elites.

In his pro-Western civilization themed remarks, Baudet added, “We are standing in the rubble of what was once the most beautiful civilization in the world.”

Will The Trump White House finally punish Facebook for censorship?

The Duran’s Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris take a look at US President Trump’s tweet where he has said that he would be “looking into” a report that his social media chief, Dan Scavino Jr. has been censored by Facebook.

Are we finally about to see the Trump White House move to punish social media outlets for their blatant and bias censorship of alternative narratives that dare to stray from globalist neo-liberal and radical left ideology?

As Big Tech’s censorship of conservatives becomes ever more flagrant and overt, the old arguments about protecting the sanctity of the modern public square are now invalid. Our right to freely engage in public discourse through speech is under sustained attack, necessitating a vigorous defense against the major social media and internet platforms.

I certainly had my suspicions confirmed when Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, “accidentally” censored a post I made regarding the Jussie Smollett hoax, which consequently led to me hearing from hundreds of my followers about how they’ve been having problems seeing, liking or being able to interact with my posts. Many of them even claimed that they’ve had to repeatedly refollow me, as Instagram keeps unfollowing me on their accounts.

While nothing about Big Tech’s censorship of conservatives truly surprises me anymore, it’s still chilling to see the proof for yourself. If it can happen to me, the son of the president, with millions of followers on social media, just think about how bad it must be for conservatives with smaller followings and those who don’t have the soapbox or media reach to push back when they’re being targeted?

Thanks to a brave Facebook whistleblower who approached James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas, we now know that Mark Zuckerberg’s social media giant developed algorithms to “deboost” certain content, limiting its distribution and appearance in news feeds. As you probably guessed, this stealth censorship was specifically aimed at conservatives.

Facebook appears to have deliberately tailored its algorithm to recognize the syntax and style popular among conservatives in order to “deboost” that content. “Mainstream media,” “SJW” (Social Justice Warrior) and “red pill” — all terms that conservatives often use to express themselves — were listed as red flags, according to the former Facebook insider.

Facebook engineers even cited BlazeTV host Lauren Chen’s video criticizing the social justice movement as an example of the kind of “red pills” that users just aren’t allowed to drop anymore. Mainstream conservative content was strangled in real time, yet fringe leftists such as the Young Turks enjoy free rein on the social media platform.

Despite the occasional brave gesture, politicians have been far too sluggish in recognizing the extent of the problem. But the Republican Party and the conservative movement are becoming more vigilant against the suppression of our speech, as we saw at last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

Silicon Valley lobbyists have splashed millions of dollars all over the Washington swamp to play on conservatives’ innate faith in the free-market system and respect for private property. Even as Big Tech companies work to exclude us from the town square of the 21st century, they’ve been able to rely on misguided conservatives to carry water for them with irrelevant pedantry about whether the First Amendment applies in cases of social media censorship.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has been making a name for himself as a Republican prepared to stand up to Big Tech malfeasance since his time as Missouri’s attorney general. He delivered a tour de force interview with The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel in front of the CPAC crowd, one that provided a clear-eyed assessment of the ongoing affront to the freedoms of conservative speech and expression.

Hawley demolished the absurd notion that “conservative principles” preclude taking action to ensure free debate online simply because Big Tech firms — the most powerful corporations in the world — are private companies.

Hawley pointed out that Big Tech companies already enjoy “sweetheart deals” under current regulations that make their malfeasance a matter of public concern. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, for instance, allows them to avoid liability for the content that users post to their platforms. To address this problem, Hawley proposed adding a viewpoint neutrality requirement for platforms that benefit from Section 230’s protections, which were originally enacted to protect the internet as “a forum for a true diversity of political discourse.”

“Google and Facebook should not be a law unto themselves,” Hawley declared. “They should not be able to discriminate against conservatives. They should not be able to tell us we need to sit down and shut up!”

It’s high time other conservative politicians started heeding Hawley’s warnings, because the logical endpoint of Big Tech’s free rein is far more troubling than conservative meme warriors losing their Twitter accounts. As we’re already starting to see, what starts with social media censorship can quickly lead to banishment from such fundamental services as transportation, online payments and banking.

Left unchecked, Big Tech and liberal activists could construct a private “social credit” system — not unlike what the communists have nightmarishly implemented in China — that excludes outspoken conservatives from wide swaths of American life simply because their political views differ from those of tech executives.

There is no conservative principle that even remotely suggests we are obligated to adopt a laissez-faire attitude while the richest companies on earth abuse the power we give them to put a thumb on the scale for our political enemies.

If anything, our love of the free market dictates that we must do whatever is necessary to ensure that the free marketplace of ideas remains open to all.